Sporting goods: Anta manager heads Puma supervisory board

Herzogenaurach. The new major Chinese shareholder Anta Sports has appointed a new chairman on the supervisory board of the traditional Franconian sporting goods manufacturer Puma.

The head of the committee is now 50-year-old Anta manager Dennis Tao, as Puma announced after an extraordinary supervisory board meeting. Tao succeeds Héloïse Temple-Boyer. The French Artemis SAS completed the sale of its share package of 29.06 percent of Puma shares to Anta at the beginning of October.

In addition to Dennis Tao, Jeanne Huang (56), who also works at Anta, was appointed as a member of the Puma supervisory board. The previous deputy chairman, Jean-Marc Duplaix, is giving up his post to replace them. According to the company, the court orders of Dennis Tao and Jeanne Huang are valid until the annual general meeting in May 2027.

Puma, once number three in the world in the sporting goods industry behind US market leader Nike and local rival Adidas, has recently had significant economic problems. The company slipped into the red and had to accept a loss in sales. In 2025 only 7.3 billion euros were generated and a record loss was incurred. Puma is slipping in the ranking of sporting goods companies and is currently well behind its own major shareholder Anta. Puma plans to announce its figures for the first nine months of the year on October 30th.

Anta, on the other hand, has been on a growth path for years and has bought up some well-known sporting goods brands such as Wilson (tennis, golf), Arcteryx (outdoor), and Atomic (ski) in the USA and Europe. Among other things, Puma hopes that the takeover will provide better insights into the important Chinese sporting goods market - which is not only considered the world's largest market in the industry, but also the one with the greatest growth potential.